Le Coran: Français–Peul (Oumar Bâ)

Le Coran: Français–Peul is the first written translation of the meanings of the Qur'an into Fula in Latin script, by Oumar Bâ, published in Paris in 1982 with a preface by Léopold Sédar Senghor. ¹

Oumar Bâ (1917–1998) was born in the Futa Toro region on the Senegal river, the son of a qadi; he received a traditional Islamic education and memorised the Qur'an, then entered the colonial school system and administration, became a senior official of independent Mauritania, headed IFAN there, took a Sorbonne doctorate, and studied Arabic in Saudi Arabia after retiring, receiving his diploma in 1990. ¹

L'Harmattan published it with the Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique in 1982, with a reprint in 2001; it sets French and Fula translations in adjacent columns, verse by verse in canonical order, without the Arabic text and without notes. ¹ Johanna Pink shows that the French column is in fact Régis Blachère's translation with elements of Édouard Montet's, unacknowledged, while the Fula is Bâ's own, in the Futa Toro variety, apparently from the Arabic, and often follows mainstream interpretation where Blachère departs from it. ¹

Pink sees it as a document of the ambivalences of early postcolonial West Africa, reviving local heritage while giving great prestige to French cultural models, as Senghor's Catholic preface shows. ¹

• Johanna Pink, "Qur'an translation of the week #155", The Global Qur'an, 2023. ¹